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©
Carmen Thyssen Collection
John Atkinson Grimshaw

A Moonlit Evening

1880
Oil on Cardboard.
25.5 x 46 cm
Carmen Thyssen Collection
Inv. no. (
CTB.1990.11
)
Not on display
  • Level 2 Permanent Collection
  • Level 1 Permanent Collection
  • Level 0 Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
  • Level -1 Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Level 2
Permanent Collection
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 13 15 16 17 18 22 19 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Recommended start of the visitClassical rooms
1 14th Century. Early Italian Painting 2 15th Century. German and Spanish Painting 3 15th Century. Early Netherlandish Painting 4 15th Century. Italian Painting 5 15th and 16th Centuries. Renaissance Portraiture 6 16th Century. Villahermosa Gallery 7 16th Century. Italian Painting 8 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 9 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 10 16th Century. Netherlandish Painting 11 Tiziano, Tintoretto, Bassano and  El Greco 12 17th Century. Caravaggio and Baroque Painting 13 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 14 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 15 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 16 18th Century. Italian Painting 17 18th Century. Italian Painting 18 18th Century. Italian Painting 19 Classical rooms 20 Classical rooms 21 Classical rooms 22 18th Century. Italian Painting 23 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 24 18th Century. French and English Painting 25 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Scenes of Daily Life and Interiors 26 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 27 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Portrait 28 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 29 19th Century. European Painting. Goya and Romanticism  
Level 1
Permanent Collection
30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 Postpop rooms Rodin room
30 18th and 19th Centuries. Transatlantic Relations 31 19th Century. American Landscape and Environmental Awareness 32 19th Century. American Landscape and Urban Life 33 Recovering the ligth. Restoration of Waterloo Bridge, by André Derain 34 20th Century. Expressionist Landscapes 35 20th Century. Expressionist Portraits 36 20th Century. The Language of the Body 37 20th Century. Urban unrest 38 20th Century. Flowers 39 20th Century. Pioneers of abstraction 40 20th Century. Popular flavor 41 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition I 42 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition II 43 20th Century. Abstract Utopias 44 20th Century. Dada and Surrealism 45 20th Century. Interwar Realisms 46 20th Century. American Abstraction I 48 20th Century. Post-ward American Art 49 20th Century. Post-ward European Figurative Art 50 20th Century. Informalisms 51 20th Century. Homo Ludens 52 20th Century. Pop Art 53 Postpop rooms 54 Postpop rooms 55 Postpop rooms 56 Postpop rooms Rodin Exhibition room
Level 0
Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
A B C D E F G H I J Hall Temporary exhibition rooms Access to Permanent Collection Entrance Access to Carmen Thyssen Collection Paseo del Prado Garden
A 17th and 18th Centuries. Old Masters B 19th Century. North American Landscape C 19th Century. French Naturalist Landscape D 19th Century. Impressionism E 19th Century. Monet and North American Impressionism F 19th Century. Gauguin and Postimpressionism G 19th and 20th Centuries. Neo Impressionism and its Wake H 20th Century. Early Avant-gardes I 20th Century. Between the Wars Painting. Cubism, Abstraction and Surrealism J 20th Century. North American Painting and Others • HALL
Level -1
Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Temporary exhibition rooms Conference room EducaThyssen Workshop
When John Atkinson Grimshaw married his wife, Theodosia Hubbard, they lived in a very small house in Leeds, and although he longed to paint, they had insufficient money to allow him to give up his job working on the railways. In the evenings, he enjoyed going for walks with his wife through the darkened streets and woodlands of the Leeds suburbs, and then inspired by this he would go home and paint. These records of moonlit walks now constitute the essence of Grimshaw's popularity and reputation as a painter. By 1861, he was successful enough as an artist to give up his daytime job and devote his career entirely to painting.

John Atkinson Grimshaw loved to paint the vast mansions of 19th-century England, he delighted in the romance and the elegance of their architecture, and his pleasure in them was satisfied when, in 1870, he moved into a Jacobean house, Knostrop Old Hall, which became the family home. He was fascinated by the contrast between moonlight and artificial light and in his urban scenes, he experiments with the varied effects of the moon, the light glowing from inside houses, and the reflections of moonlight on the wet road.

During the 19th-century, the English northern cities expanded with industrialisation, and new leafy suburbs developed as the wealthy industrialists began to build their own private homes, sheltered from the street by high-walls and tall trees. The home was of paramount importance to Victorian society, as it was seen as a haven of family values, shelter and security. Grimshaw himself believed in the sanctity of marriage and family, and, despite financial hardships, enjoyed a secure relationship with his wife and was a loving father to their children. His moonlight scenes were made more appealing for their aesthetic embellishment of the Industrial Revolution era, the deserted streets bore no relation to the environment within the labour-intensive factories.

A Moonlit Evening is a wonderful example of the unique genre which Grimshaw created. Grimshaw specialised in the depiction of moonlit walks, shadowed streets and rain-washed roads, to make atmospheric compositions which were highly individual to the artist. The house in this painting is probably fictitious, to the artist's own design, based on a combination of styles which he observed and absorbed. He often included a solitary figure which added a sense of contemplation and ambiguity to the scene, inviting the viewer to imagine a narrative for the scene, to consider the thoughts and feelings of the person, and to dwell on their walk on a lost and lonely night. It implies both a sense of isolation, but simultaneously of freedom, in the abandonment of conventions for a single female to be wandering alone in the dark, accompanied only by her thoughts, and this is an appealing romantic notion, probably inspired by Grimshaw's love of Lord Alfred Tennyson's yearning poetry.

Nicole Ayton

19th Centurys. XIX - Pintura británicaPaintingOilCardboard
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Private and/or didactic use
John Atkinson Grimshaw. Noche con luna.
A Moonlit Evening
John Atkinson Grimshaw

©

Carmen Thyssen Collection

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John Atkinson Grimshaw. Noche con luna.
A Moonlit Evening
John Atkinson Grimshaw

©

Carmen Thyssen Collection

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